
E^m. 



Copyright iN" 



COPifRIGHT DEPOSIT, 



The World War 
Jefferson and Democracy 



By 

FRANKLIN P. FOSTER 




THE HISTORY CLUB 

Publishers and Distributors 
Anderson, Ind., U. S. A. 

1917 



£"332 

■rrs 



Copyright 1917 
By Franki^in P. Foster 



DEC 22 1^17 



©CI.A481087 



TO PATRIOTS 



NOTE: — "Writings," to Which 
Citations ark Made in thk Fol- 
lowing Pages, Denote The Writ- 
ings OF Thomas Jefferson, Pub- 
lished BY THE Thomas Jefferson 
Memorial Association, Washing- 
ton, D. C, 1903. And all Refer- 
ences ARE Grouped at the End of 
THE Booklet. 



THE WORLD WAR 
JEFFERSON 

AND 
DEMOCRACY 



THE WORLD WAR 



JEFFERSON AND DEMOCRACY 




HE mighty conflict at arms in 
which four nations on one 
side and twent}^ on tlie otlier 
now grapple for mastery, 
reveals the march of Jeffer- 
son's ideals. The equal rights 
of nations, great and small, was the appeal 
of the Entente powers the moment the 
German army crossed the Belgian border. 
And the idea which made the entrance of 
the United States into the struggle nec- 
essary and popular was, that "the world 
should be made safe for democracy" — the 
same sentiment that glowed in Jefferson's 
"wish to see liberty extended to all men," 
in his enlightened claim, that "justice is the 
fundamental law of society" and in his bet- 
ter known jewel of the Declaration, that 
"governments derive their just powers 
from the consent of the governed." It is 
but fair to his fame and can but be en- 
nobling to all men to bear in mind the fact 
that these enchaining watchwords of which 
we are so proud and insistent owe their 



The 

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War 



essential significance to him, and to refrain 
from thinking or teaching that American 
democracy had its start or primary endorse- 
ment from Washington or Lincoln or Wil- 
son. Yet there are those who urge this, 
and others who innocently believe it. But 
it is not well to propagate an error, how- 
ever agreeable it may be to do so. Truth 
is the most wholesome element of history, 
as its perversion is the most evil. And the 
faithless record, while it may grossly ex- 
tend or belittle the merits of an individual, 
is prone to work a greater wrong to the 
public at large. It has been so with regard 
to Jefferson, wherein writers and readers 
have tried to offer and receive the lessons 
of democracy with the world's greatest 
democrat left out. We justify the belliger- 
ent course of our country by the language 
and spirit of the Declaration of Independ- 
ence, but do not lisp the name of its author. 
We enthuse and wax eloquent over its 
maxims, but lack the courage and fairness 
to link with them the name of the one who 
wrote them, of the only one who could 
have written them. We shout now about 
the ideals and valor of France and of the 
great debt of love and service we owe her. 
Yet in it all we say nothing of the pioneer- 
ing republican who, beyond any other, 



Page 2 



Jefferson 

AND 

Democracy 



boldly advocated friendly and considerate 
treatment of her in the times succeeding 
the contribution of her arms to the triumph 
of our independence; who alone of great 
Americans in his day placed a sane and 
kindly estimate on the character of the 
French patriots and people, or on the cause 
and virtue of their revolution;^ who was 
standing for peace between the United 
States and France, in 1797, when partisan 
enemies, under a pretext of doubtful 
merit, were crying for her invasion by an 
American army. 



LAFAYETTE 



And also, while the name of Lafayette is 
on every American tongue, and recitals are 
rife about his personal attachments to this 
and that American, voices are mute and 
pages bare in that particular of Jefferson, 
his life long and most intimate American 
friend, to whom in 1808, the care worn, 
battle scarred warrior of France appealed 
in all the eloquence of grief for s^aiipathy, 
then stricken with the keenest sorrow of 
his life, for fate had called from him the 
wife and mother of his cherished house- 



PageS 



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hold; to whom in 1823, he subscribed him- 
self, "your old, tender friend"; to whom 
in his prime he went, in Paris, 1789, taking 
other patriots with him, for guidance in 
the making of their new constitution, and 
into which was afterward embodied the 
wholesome provisions agreed upon in the 
house of the American Ambassador.^ Nor 
does this indicate all the kinship and care 
for each other of those heroic spirits. The 
consummate democracy of Jefferson and 
his thoughtful anxiety for the future of 
Lafayette appear at once in his suggestion 
to him, that he leave the party of the nobil- 
ity for that of the people.^ A rare instance 
of devotion is of record in the part which 
Jefferson bore in the placing of a bust of 
Lafayette in the capitol of Virginia, and in 
presenting to the city of Paris "a like 
monument of his worth." 

Jefferson was delighted to learn that the 
State of Georgia had given the Count d' 
Estaing twenty thousand acres of land, and 
promptly said that Virginia should remem- 
ber Count Rochambeau and General La- 
fayette in a similar manner. It was soon 
arranged that Lafayette should have a 
large tract north of the river Ohio. But 
on the acquirement of Louisiana, and 
owing to a general belief that lands would 



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Jefferson 

AND 

Democracy 



rise rapidly in value near the city of New 
Orleans, a change in its location was made, 
and Congress, at the instance and with the 
concurrence of Jefferson, then President, 
provided for the conveyance to him of ten 
thousand acres in that vicinity. And during 
the visit of Lafayette to this country, 1824, 
Jefferson expressed the hope that we might 
close our welcome to him "with something 
more substantial than dinners and balls," 
and proposed "that Congress testify its 
gratitude to the Nation's benefactor by 
making a handsome pecuniary provision 
for him," the response to which by the 
honorable body was a vote of tw^o hundred 
thousand dollars and a township of land 
in Louisiana, to our great guest in further 
"consideration of his services and expendi- 
tures in the American Revolution." 

But the partiality of Jefferson for La- 
fayette, even in a material way, was not 
measured alone in land and money. He 
tendered high honor also. One of Jeffer- 
son's long cherished desires was that La- 
fa^^ette might remove and with his family 
become permanently settled as a citizen of 
this countr}^ and having closed the deal 
with France for Louisiana, bringing to us 
its unmeasured advantages and the possi- 
bilities of ocean to ocean empire, he again, 



Page 5 



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while President, tried to attract the General 
to onr shores, and with that and his superb 
qualifications in view, asked him to become 
governor of the new possession.^ 

The French, English, Italian and Japan- 
ese envoys, while on their several missions 
to the United States in 1917, looking to a 
concerted defense of democracy, were con- 
ducted to the tomb of Washington, and the 
French representatives were escorted to 
the grave of Lincoln. This was all highly 
respectful and appropriate. But they were 
not invited to visit the sacred spot where 
Jefferson sleeps; and this was the result 
of American stupidity and inexcusable 
neglect. Lafayette, on his return to this 
country, went to Mt. Vernon in honor of 
his great soldier chief. But he did not for- 
get the apostle of American democracy, 
and during that memorable sojourn, found 
his way on two different occasions to 
Monticello. The greetings and farewells, 
the felicitations and the tears then indulged 
by those venerable friends and associates 
in the two greatest revolutions of two conti- 
nents should never fail to stir and mingle 
the memories of Americans and French- 
men. 

Viscount Ishii, pronouncing before the 
United States Senate, on behalf of his com- 



pare 6 



Jefferson 

AND 

Democracy 



mission and nation, a feverent tribute to 
American liberty, conjured with the name 
and vision of Jefferson. And other facts 
point to the probability that Japanese 
statesmen are well grounded in the history 
of American democracy. It has been writ- 
ten that Count Okuma, a former premier 
of his country, because of his admiration 
for the author of the Declaration, and of 
the favor with which he views republican 
institutions, has been called by his country- 
men, the Jefferson of Japan. 

But in none of the many allusions to 
American democracy made by the other 
visiting envoys, or by Americans on the 
various committees receiving them, was the 
name of Jefferson spoken. It was not in 
the colors of M. Viviani's beautiful word 
paintings, although in moving phrase and 
pathos he often touched upon the ties of 
Lafayette to us, and upon the fundamentals 
of our democracy. Nor should he or any 
foreign spokesman be criticised for this 
omission. They could only be expected to 
heed such personal preferences for polit- 
ical favorites here as they might have 
noted. It was their duty as well as their 
pleasure to pitch their speech in terms the 
most agreeable to those whom they came 
to address. And why should a French 



Page 7 



The 

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orator in the situation of M. Viviani on 
those august occasions, refer to the Atlas 
of our democracy, or to his affectionate 
and important relations with the illustri- 
ous patriot of his own land, when prob- 
ably he knew, as all who have made any 
study of it know, that from the time Jef- 
ferson rose to the pinnacle of his power 
and prestige, it had been the habit of an 
astute school of statesmen, publicists and 
French haters, wearing a thin veneer of 
democracy, to write him down, ostensibly 
in the thought that he derived his doctrines 
from the French, but in reality because of 
their aversion to democracy, when possibly 
he may have known that an American 
celebrity and ex-President had formally 
written and published, that Jefferson 
"loved the French with a servile devotion," 
a statement given such a clever setting as 
to warp and mislead the minds of the un- 
wary," when possibly he may have read 
and remembered that another of our Presi- 
dents, giving circulation to that false and 
frequent disparagement, had written in an 
attractive book that "Jefferson was not a 
thorough iVmerican because of the strain 
of French philosophy that permeated and 
weakened all his thought"?^ 

But whether or no, M. Viviani and his 



Page 8 



Jefferson 

AND 

Democracy 



colleagues had actually met with the com- 
ments thus made to queer American his- 
tory and slur the fame of Jefferson, they 
could not fail to feel the influence of such 
work, nor to observe the silence it invoked, 
even if unconscious of its cause and source. 



FRANCE 



An3^ discussion of the attitude of Jeffer- 
son toward the French, as one may sup- 
pose, would not be relished now by those 
who have habitually claimed that people 
to be decadent, and characterized Jefferson 
as weak because he accounted them admir- 
able and their revolution not without re- 
deeming features. It would be especially 
so with the intellectuals who are now has- 
tening to take the position which he then 
occupied. The w^ar which today upheaves 
the world has turned thought back to 
elemental questions and to a readjusted 
light on the character of races. It enables 
Americans to place a different estimate on 
France. Viewed in the titanic conflict, no 
praise of her seems too high. We behold 
her courage, her grandeur, her soul, her 
love, her ideals. Jefferson saw and felt 



Page 9 



The 

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them in his day, and in these words 
acknowledged them: 



"I can not leave this great and good 
country without expressing my sense of its 
pre-eminence of character among the na- 
tions of the earth. A more benevolent peo- 
ple I have never known, nor greater warmth 
and devotedness in their select friendships. 
Their kindness and accommodation to 
strangers is unparalleled, and the hospi- 
tality of Paris is beyond anything I had 
conceived to be practicable in a large city. 
Their eminence too in science, the com- 
municative dispositions of their scientific 
men, the politeness of the general manners, 
the ease and vivacity of their conversa- 
tions, give a charm to their society, to be 
found nowhere else. In a comparison of 
this with other countries, we have the proof 
of primacy, which was given to Themis- 
tocles, after the battle of Salamis. Every 
general voted to himself the first reward 
of valor and the second to Themistocles. 
So, ask the travelled inhabitant of any na- 
tion, in what country on earth would you 
rather live? — Certainly, in my own, where 
are all my friends, my relations, and the 
earliest and sweetest affections and recol- 
lections of my life. Which would be your 
second choice? France." 



Page 10 



Jefferson 

AND 

Democracy 



TRIUMPH OF JEFFERSON'S 
OPINIONS 



But this fairness to France was only one 
of many slogans under which the ene- 
mies of democracy attacked Jefferson and 
sought to dim his glory, while in each 
instance, as in this, time and trial have 
brought posterity to the support of his 
ideas, if not of him. 

The late Senator George F. Hoar of 
Massachusetts spoke these splendid words: 



"Thomas Jefferson was one of those men 
who can differ from hemispheres, from 
generations, from administrations and from 
centuries with the perfect assurance that 
on any question of liberty and righteous- 
ness, if the opinion of Thomas Jefferson 
stand on one side and the opinion of man- 
kind on the other, the world will, in the 
end, come around to his way of thinking." 



To such length had the distrust of demo- 
cracy proceeded before now among certain 
ones opposing it, that Jefferson was held 



Page 11 



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by them to be disqualified as a statesman 
because he was too learned. His intellect- 
uality gave such critics great concern, and 
they could not believe that one diligent in 
the pursuit of science, polished in litera- 
ture and the languages, could cope with the 
more practical duties of political life. But 
in this, sentiment seems to have changed. 
And most of us now concede that a states- 
man may be a student and yet be competent 
for public service. 



RELIGIOUS FREEDOM 



In the application of democratic prin- 
ciples to the security of religious liberty, 
he accomplished more than any man who 
ever lived. On that subject he drew the 
Virginia statute, "in all the latitude of rea- 
son and of right," to use his own phrase, 
and never ceased his labors in its behalf, 
until under it opinion on all questions of 
belief was free, and where first in the his- 
tory of civilization, state and church stood 
separate. To be sure he was thoroughly 
despised for this by a few of his nearby 
neighbors, by a numerous body of his own 
State, and berated as an atheist from thou- 



Page 12 



Jefferson 

AND 

Democracy 



sands of pulpits throughout the land. But 
to-da3% fearless, thankful, open-minded 
men do not fail to realize the immense 
value of this work and the world-wide ex- 
tent of its appropriation, which bids fair 
to gem the constitution of every State on 
earth, as it does that of the United States. 



A LARGE REPUBLIC 



A fierce hue and cry was once raised 
against him for his efforts to broaden the 
public domain. The opponents of this did 
not believe in a big country, and they 
wanted ours to remain little. Some of them 
contended that democracy was practicable 
only in small countries. He said the bigger 
the country the better for it. They wanted 
to divide the country at the Mississippi, and 
talked of yielding to Spain our rights to 
navigate the great river. He said we will 
never yield an inch of its waters. They 
were greatly put out over the acquisition 
of Louisiana, and laid the blame for its 
purchase on him alone. No one else and 
no other agency was then joined with him 
in responsibility for it. But a later crop 
of critics, seeing that the policy of expan- 



Page 13 



World 
War 



sion was working well and that the Repub- 
lic, reaching to his dream, had gained 
favor, discovered to their satisfaction that 
the great province was not the fruit of his 
labor at all, but that it was due to others 
or to other agencies. One respectable 
authority^ declares that the credit for the 
purchase belongs to Livingston, not . to 
Jefferson. And another^ tells us that Jef- 
ferson "was forced by the sentiment of the 
South and West" to act, and that in the 
negotiation he was "undignified," "timid" 
and "completely overmatched by the 
genius and lofty force of Bonaparte and 
Talleyrand," when in fact it was done with 
such masculine grasp of the situation from 
its inception to its finish, and completed so 
suddenly that scarcely a ripple of agitation 
arose over it in any localit3^ and was by the 
public in general an unexpected realiza- 
tion, when unfolded by the President and 
his ministers in all its actual and magnif- 
icent outlines — the consummation of his 
unerring impulse and daring statesman- 
ship. 

Results in this transaction, as in all 
engagements of great pith and moment, 
rather than words, show who the victor 
was and who the beaten. And it has always 
been the understanding of Americans and 



Page 14 



Jefferson 

AND 

Democracy 



the teaching of history until these later 
effusions, that Jefferson inspired and 
achieved the purchase of Louisiana. But if 
by such assertions, this proud chapter of 
American diplomacy can be so distorted as 
to cause his part in it to appear disgrace- 
ful, or his name to vanish from its glory, 
it will but add another evidence of the 
great and injurious extent to which the art- 
ful may plan and the supine among a peo- 
ple suffer ingratitude and the outrage of 
truth to triumph. 



DEMOCRACY AND THE UNION 



No greater distrust of democracy was 
manifest during the formative period of 
this Nation than that by which the existence 
of the Union itself became the subject of 
doubt and menace. And no truer or more 
timely service was ever rendered for its 
preservation than that in which Jefferson 
gave expression to his deep faith in its 
form, and in which he called for loyalty to 
its principles. Then his was not the theory 
of all; to-day it is. A friend and political 
leader appealed to him with suggestions 
looking to a separation of certain States 



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from the Union, at a time, 1798, when there 
was much complaint in all the country of 
federal encroachments upon personal lib- 
erty under the most odious laws ever 
enacted by Congress. Jefferson penned an 
answer in which he not only refused 
encouragement to the proposition pre- 
sented, but he crushed all arguments for 
secession, setting forth clearly many ad- 
vantages of the Union and the patience and 
tolerance which the citizen and minority 
parties should exercise toward the Govern- 
ment, even in periods of oppressive admin- 
istration.^ So fearless was he, and withal 
so firm in his belief of popular fidelity to 
the Union that he dismissed \yith careless 
derision the threats of the Essex Junto to 
break it up. But being further convinced 
of the serious designs of those plotters and 
malcontents, he set it down that "the 
cement of this Union is the heart-blood of 
every American," and further counseled 
the Republicans to put at stake for its 
safety, if need be, "their lives and fortunes 
on the pledge of their sacred honor." 

No sooner had notice of the treason 
which Aaron Burr sowed over the country 
in his plot to set up another government 
within the borders of this one reached 
Jefferson, than he put on foot and inspired 



Page 16 



Jefferson 

AND 

Democracy 



such a vigilant and vigorous pursuit of the 
offenders, that their schemes and miUtary 
forces were balked and dispersed before 
the^^ could even form for resistance of the 
Federal arms. And the prosecution which 
followed their arrest was so thorough and 
able that nothing in all probability could 
have saved the chief defendant from the 
gallows, except the technical rulings, con- 
trar}^ to the spirit and substance of the Con- 
stitution and the law, made by the presiding 
judge,^*^ biased to bitterness against Jeffer- 
son, and glossed over and commended by 
reporters, scribblers and partisans, some of 
them present at the trial, and all doing 
what they could to hinder the righteous 
cause of the Republic and give aid and 
comfort to the traitors. The public, though 
stunned at the rulings and decision of the 
court, acquiesced. But the lawyer who 
studies the case, condemns them. And the 
people who cherish the sanctity of their 
institutions and the inviolability of their 
Constitution, now approve the stainless, 
patriotic course of Jefferson to uphold 
them, and for such a bold and monumental 
offense would be satisfied to-day with noth- 
ing less than a full hearing and submission 
to the jury of the evidence as offered under 
that historic indictment.^^ 



Page 17 



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Six years prior to the great debate of 
Webster and Hayne in the United States 
Senate, with the sentiment of inseparable 
union glowing in the per oration of the 
former, Jefferson in referring to the ap- 
proaching visit of Lafayette to this coun- 
try, wrote that its effect would be salutary 
"by rallying us together and strengthening 
the habit of considering our country as one 
and indivisible." 

But in spite of this, and the Nation's rec- 
ord of magic growth and adjustment to 
Federal needs under the lead of his con- 
structive genius, the lynx-eyed fault-finder 
and cheap politician have taken occasion 
throughout their reign of license to dwell 
upon the charge, reiterated by writers of 
their caliber, that Jefferson was a State's- 
right man. The theory of State's-right had 
neither birth nor favor with him.^^ That 
doctrine first appeared as an issue in our 
politics after he had passed from its stage. 
He was for the rights of States, as he was 
for the rights of individuals and of the 
Nation. And he was for the security and 
proper poise of each and all of them in 
their several constitutional and related 
powers. He was for the Union in the full 
vigor required for its safety and its sov- 
ereignty. x\nd he was with soul and might 



Page 18 



Jefferson 

AND 

Democracy 



for a robust Americanism and a sea-girt 
Republic under the aegis of the Federal 
Constitution of which no other being so 
timely or so clearly as he had vision. 



INGRATITUDE 



From his definition of liberty no race of 
man could be excluded, and his laws were 
given to make all free. Yet in the section 
of his birth and residence, where it may 
seem his greatness would have shared a 
special deference, the class of privilege 
based on the bondage of the blacks, and 
dominant there in social and political 
affairs, was so embarrassed by his teach- 
ing and its truth touching slavery, that in 
efforts to defend and justify that institu- 
tion, it strove, as a matter of course, to 
parry his doctrine of freedom and to 
obscure his name. The partiality for his 
teachings lingered longer in the North. Rut 
there the political parties, although claim- 
ing foundation in his tenets, were effect- 
ually silenced by their aggressive asso- 
ciates in the South on an3^ subject or any 
name the mention of which hinted in any 
manner at interference with the institution 



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of slavery. Thus the early prejudice of the 
commercial interests in New England 
against Jefferson was matched by this 
denial of him at the South, while the timid 
and sinister elements of both sections pro- 
duced a political and educational cowardice 
and apathy that shunned and shaded his 
personal prestige everywhere. His name 
was in eclipse from the close of Jack- 
son's administration to the end of the 19th 
century. Emigrants from the older States 
pushed westward during the thirties, for- 
ties and fifties in quest of lands and for- 
tunes made possible by his foresight and 
alluring by his helpful policies, yet in that 
very pursuit and possession, they closed 
their memories against him. Those hardy, 
happy pioneers and their descendants have 
done almost nothing to impress upon their 
region his title to their gratitude, or upon 
their posterity the debt of honor they owe 
him. The youth, and young men of that 
period and since then, have passed through 
their school and college courses, many of 
them becoming familiar with the life story 
of Washington, Franklin, Jackson, Lin- 
coln, Lee, and of characters less noted, 
without learning the name, much less the 
history of him in whose language their land 
was christened,^^ and under whose laws of 



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Jefferson 

AND 

Democracy 



liber t3^ and equality they were living and 
thinking, all unconscious of their prime 
mover. Instructors in our institutions of 
learning, with few exceptions, have been 
asleep to the history of democracy and 
blind to the biography of Jefferson. Such 
lack of appreciation is strikingly character- 
istic of the communities west of the Miss- 
issippi, the city of St. Louis being the sole 
exception. A cit}^ of the mountains dis- 
tributed to its school buildings these 
names: Washington, Adams, Webster, 
Lincoln, Greely, Garfield, Blaine. Its board 
of education in taking this notice of na- 
tional celebrities are in accord with those 
of their sister cities of the West in keeping 
the name of Jefferson from their lists, 
although indebted to his far-sighted and 
constructive policies for the very ground 
on which their buildings stand, and to a 
service by him in the interest of public 
education and the common school system 
of America beyond that of any man of his 
generation.^'' 

LINCOLN OF JEFFERSON 

But in 1860, the principles of democracy 
again became imperative, and men grew 



Page 21 



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bold in their assertion. The Union was 
imperiled, while slavery and emancipation 
were in the reckoning. A new political 
organization rallied under the vital prin- 
ciples and the very name in which the 
party of Jefferson was coined, and confi- 
dent of the republicanism which he had 
taught and of its triumph, these new re- 
formers lifted up and bore forward the 
banner of freedom and national unity, 
which those recreant to his ideals during 
the three decades which had then gone by, 
let slip from their careless hold. And with 
slavery wiped from the escutcheon of the 
Union by the struggle from which it came 
forth whole, another prophecy of Jefferson 
was fulfilled.^^ And while there was gen- 
eral rejoicing at this, his name was allowed 
to fade yet further into the shadow of 
oblivion, although his doctrines had be- 
come so popular that many hastened to 
ascribe their origin to the great President 
then leading in support of them, a claim 
which since that time has been widely in- 
culcated, but which is without justification 
in fact. 

Lincoln advocated and executed demo- 
cratic principles with courage and wisdom. 
But no fundamental, democratic truth was 
ever announced by him or through his 



Page 22 



Jefferson 

AND 

Democracy 



efforts enacted into law, which had not had 
its origin and sanction in the teachings of 
Jefferson. History overflows with the evi- 
dence of this. But proof of it must be 
shortened here to the words of the immor- 
tal emancipator himself: 



*'I have never had a feeling, politically, 
that did not spring from the sentiments 
embodied in the Declaration of Independ- 
ence. * * * I have often inquired of 
myself what great principle or idea it was 
that kept this Confederacy so long together. 
It was not the mere matter of separation 
of the colonies from the motherland, but 
that sentiment in the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence which gave liberty, not alone to 
the people of this country, but hope to all 
the world for all future time. It was that 
which gave promise that in due time the 
weight would be lifted from the shoulders 
of all men and that all should have an equal 
chance. This is the sentiment in the 
Declaration of Independence. "^^ 



And the purpose in pointing this out is 
to hold aloft the torch of truth, not to les- 
sen the real eminence of Lincoln. He, as 



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other immortals, could he speak, would 
have only what belongs to him. Jefferson 
would ask no more, perhaps much less, for 
of all great men, he most veiled himself. 
But Lincoln, in his own way performed 
his own great part. And the fact that he 
rose to the full height of his opportunity, 
seized and put to its proper test the efficient, 
saving philosophy of another, is of itself 
enough to rank him high. He grasped the 
need and utility of republicanism as con- 
ceived and stated by Jefferson. And in this 
connection another wreath of greatness 
adorns the brow of Lincoln. For he neither 
failed to properly comprehend and appre- 
ciate Jefferson, nor denied the virtues of 
his precepts. Roosevelt describes him as a 
"doctrinaire" and says, "his influence in 
America was on the whole distinctly evil."^^ 
Choate termed his maxims of human lib- 
erty "glittering generalities." Calhoun 
called them "self evident lies." But Lincoln 
revived them in his livid English as "the 
axioms of free society" and further said: 



"All honor to Jefferson — to the man who, 
in the concrete pressure of a struggle for na- 
tional independence by a single people, had 
the coolness, forecaste and sagacity to intro- 



Page 24 



Jefferson 

AND 

Democracy 



duce into a merely revolutionary document 
an abstract truth, applicable to all men and 
all times, and so embalm it there that to- 
day and in all coming days it shall be a 
rebuke and a stumbling block to the very 
harbingers of reappearing tyranny and op- 
pression. "^^ 



THE FIRST DEMOCRATIC RULER 



And now, we fight not simply as in other 
wars, for causes based on principles of 
democracy, but for democracy itself. And 
again, as then, the ideal which was so 
fiercely assailed at its dawn, is in the noon 
of its splendor hailed fervently. One hun- 
dred and seventeen years ago, there was 
but one democratic ruler in the world. And 
he was the first one, in the modern sense 
of the term. He was the only prominent 
statesman, who in the building of the Re- 
public declared himself to be in favor of a 
democratic system of government, and 
cast his political life upon that theory/^ 
The Federalists and monocrats endeavored 
to make both him and his cause odious."^ 
But he was a democrat, not only by pro- 
fession, but by his works. He put the stamp 



Page 25 



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of real republicanism on the government 
when he went into power, just as he had 
written it in the Declaration of Independ- 
ence twenty-five years earlier. 1 He sought 
no office, but served the public in obedience 
to its will. He opposed the influences lean- 
ing toward monarchy. He discouraged 
titles, levees and occasions in imitation of 
royalty. Kings he called fools, and scorned 
the doctrine of their divinity. On nepotism 
he set the ban of his disapproval, and made 
fitness the badge of patronage.^^ He be- 
lieved in the rotation of official tenure and 
in a limit to the power of judges. He 
sought by education to qualify all citizens 
for public and private service and pro- 
claimed sovereignty to be in the people. 



THE FEDERALISTS 



Those of opposite opinions, claimed 
Washington to be of their party. And 
many such enjoyed at his hands official 
trust and favor. Jefferson did not ques- 
tion the real preference of Washington for 
republicanism, but he did feel that those 
most in his confidence during his declining 
years committed him to opinions and meas- 



Page 26 



Jefferson 

AND 

Democracy 



ures not really of his choice.^^ Late in life, 
Washington took offense at Jefferson be- 
cause of his pronounced democracy. And 
their estrangement, to whatever extent it 
may have existed, was owing to that. There 
was no withdrawal of esteem, however, on 
the part of Jefferson for Washington. He 
defended Washington to the last against 
the claims of his anti-republican friends. 
And he did so the more with the growth of 
his own official prestige and overwhelming 
endorsement of his doctrines by the peo- 
ple. He went far to save the fame of 
Washington to the principles of republi- 
canism. And the very devotion of Jefferson 
to democracy, every word he ever uttered, 
every act of his in its support must weigh 
to his special credit now, when democracy 
has become so distinctly ascendant. For 
democracy against oligarchy was formerly 
an issue. Policies obnoxious to republican 
rule were favored by men in the cabinet 
of Washington. And he was not always 
alert to resist their reactionary tendencies. 
He indorsed the Alien and Sedition laws of 
the Adams administration. Jefferson as- 
sailed those laws and the conduct of the 
Government under the Federalists. And 
he was right in doing so. Does any one 
who believes in republican democracy now 



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regret that the principles advocated by 
Jefferson prevailed? These questions 
could not be debated without including, to 
some extent, the latter part of Washington's 
political course. The monarchial and re- 
actionary conduct of the Federalists had 
committed the first President to a weak 
and unfortunate position. And his dis- 
pleasure at the criticisms of him by the 
Republicans arose principally from the 
vulnerable environment and the support 
of offensive measures into which he had 
thus been drawn, though his complaints 
were mild and dignified in contrast with 
the hatred and detraction poured forth 
against the champion of democracy by the 
Federalists and hangers-on who sought to 
hide their errors and avert their downfall 
under cover of Washington's mighty 
name.^^ But even so, it was all to no avail, 
when under the leadership of the people's 
confident tribune, the election of 1800, 
brought our country to the open door of 
democracy. And anything that Jefferson 
may have said, questioning in any manner 
the wisdom of policies upheld by Wash- 
ington, was in a tone of regret at the ap- 
pearance of his departure from republican 
rule and doctrine, and with the hope and 
resolve that the people should have the 



Page 28 



Jefferson 

AND 

Democracy 



opporiiinity to retain and promote de- 
mocracy as deep and broad as it had been 
laid in the foundations of the Republic. 



WASHINGTON 



Whether Washington was wise in his 
endeavor to balance the administration of 
public affairs between democracy and aris- 
tocracy, and to choose as his aids in their 
conduct, men of irreconcilable views on 
primary principles of government, may be 
left, with the mere suggestion of the fact, 
to individual judgment. But, however that 
may be, surely Washington can not, in the 
light of history and reason, be looked upon 
as the fountain head of American democ- 
racy or as our towering representative of 
republicanism, although he may have re- 
mained, as Jefferson insisted he did, willing 
to see it have a fair trial. The fame of a 
soldier is one thing; that of a lawgiver 
quite another. The courage, the pre- 
science, the skill of Washington leading the 
army of Independence, leaves equal glory 
in that field to no other name. As Presi- 
dent during the first eight years under the 
Federal Constitution, he displayed disin- 



Page29 



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terestedness, honesty of purpose, honesty 
of rule and abiUty of a high order. But 
his administration did not reacli that de- 
gree of perfection wliich shines tlirough 
the pure republican one of Jefferson, 
superior to any other for simplicity in the 
conduct of affairs, for absence of formality 
and ostentation, for its wholesome econ- 
om3^ the reduction of the public debt and 
taxes at the same time, for its stimulus to 
national development, its aid to internal 
improvements and expanse of territory, 
for its favor to the arts and sciences, for 
its efficiency in every department of public 
service, for the wonderful harmony in 
which the President and all under him 
labored, for its keen and constant interest 
in the general welfare, and its quick, 
human touch with men in every quarter of 
the country, bringing back to the Union 
with fresh and striking enthusiasm the love 
and loyalty of the people, while in the dis- 
covery and development of democratic 
truth and its application to the use and 
guidance of free institutions, the Sage of 
Monticello holds an easy mastery, and is 
there unrivaled by the Hero of Mt. Vernon. 



Page 30 



Jefferson 

AND 

Democracy 



WORDS OF WISDOM 



A glimpse of Jeffersonian democracy 
may be had from the following excerpts: 



"Acquiescence under insult is not the 
way to escape war." 



"Insult and war are the consequences of 
a want of respectability in the national 
character." 



"Much as I abhor war, and view it as the 
greatest scourge of mankind, and anxiously 
as I wish to keep out of the broils of Eu- 
rope, I would yet go with my brethren into 
these, rather than separate from them." 



"We have borne patiently a great deal of 
wrong, on the consideration that if nations 
go to war for every degree of injury, there 
would never be peace on earth. But when 
patience has begotten false estimates of its 



Page 31 



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motives, when wrongs are pressed because 
it is believed they will be borne, resistance 
becomes morality/' 



"Freedom, the first born daughter of 
science." 



The disease of liberty is catching." 



'All men are created equal." 



"The rights of a free people are derived 
from nature, not their magistrate." 



"Our countrymen are essentially repub- 
lican." 



"We of the United States are constitu- 
tionally and conscientiously democrats." 



Page 32 



Jefferson 

AND 

Democracy 

"The people may be led astray for a 
moment, but they will soon correct them- 
selves." 



"The will of the majority honestly ex- 
pressed should give law." 



"Republicanism exists in governments 
only in the proportion to which they em- 
body the will of their people and execute 
it." 



"Our liberty can never be safe but in the 
hands of the' people themselves, and that 
too, of the people with a certain degree of 
instruction. This it is the business of the 
state to effect, and on a general plan." 



"The information of the people at large 
can alone make them the safe, as they are 
the sole depositary of our political and re- 
ligious freedom." 



"Perhaps it will be found that to obtain 
Page 55 



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a just republic it must be so extensive as 
that local egoisms may never reach its 
greater part." 



"It seems that the smaller the society the 
bitterer the dissensions into which it 
breaks. * * * i believe ours is to owe 
its permanence to its great extent, and the 
smaller portion comparatively, which can 
ever be convulsed at one time by local pas- 
sions." 



"I believe in action by the citizens in per- 
son, in affairs within their reach and com- 
petence, and in all others by representatives 
* * * and that a government by repre- 
sentation is capable of extension over a 
greater surface of country than one of any 
other form." 



"The preservation of the holy fire of re- 
publicanism is confided to us by the world 
and the sparks which will emanate from it 
will ever serve to rekindle it in other 
quarters of the globe." 



"I have but one system of ethics for men 
and for nations." 



Page 34 



Jeffkrson 

AND 

Democracy 

DREAMER AND DOER 



These thoughts and a thousand others of 
equal import on this and kindred topics in 
the writings of Jefferson are only stronger 
and of greater significance when con- 
sidered with the contexts from which they 
are taken. And their worth is multiplied 
many times by the actual use to which he 
brought them^. Here indeed his service 
was signal. As he dreamed he created. He 
suited to formal governments the profound 
maxims of the idealist. Prior to his day, 
democracy had existed only in the abstract, 
except in a limited way in the little states 
of ancient times. It had been discussed 
onl3^ in academic fashion. It had been 
given some such expression by a few of 
the choice and radical spirits of England, 
France and other countries. But never 
until 1776, had it been incorporated into 
a state paper as the foundation of a nation 
and the ultimate legal expression of human 
rights.'' What had been thus longed for 
and presented in a speculative way, he 
made real. The ideal he reduced to the 
actual, put the terms of equal rights and 
opportunity into common thought and into 
statutes, scattered the seeds of human 



Page 55 



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liberty through public and private liter- 
ature and ribbed charters and constitu- 
tions with the holiest, sanest democracy 
that ever blessed and sweetened the gov- 
ernments of man. And in so fusing the 
verities of democracy into the laws, the 
life and the aspirations of the people, he 
bequeathed to humanity their greatest 
utility and benefit. 

That no exaggeration may be charged to 
the claim that pronounced spirituality fills 
the code of Jefferson, let us again quote the 
late Senator Hoar: 



"The author of the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence stands in human history as the 
foremost man who ever lived, whose influ- 
ence has led men to govern themselves in 
the conduct of states by spiritual laws. 
That was Jefferson's mission — to teach 
spiritual laws. Observe that I say spiritual 
laws, not spiritual truths merely, not for- 
mulae to be assented to, but rules of life to 
be governed by and acted upon. It was 
due to Jefferson that our fathers laid deep 
the foundation of the state in the moral 
law." 



And to the opinions of the great already 
cited in proof of Jefferson's genuine and 



Page 36 



Jefferson 

AND 

Democracy 



practical democracy, let there be added 
these also rendered weighty by the wisdom 
and character of those who gave them 
utterance: 



"Jefferson drew the title deed of our 
liberties. "25 



"Into the monumental act of Independ- 
ence, Jefferson poured the soul of the con- 
tinent."26 



"He put into it (the Declaration) some- 
thing that was his own, and that no one else 
could have put there. He put himself into 
it — his own genius, his own moral force, 
his faith in God, his faith in ideas, his love 
of innovation, his passion for progress, his 
invincible enthusiasm, his intolerance of 
proscription, of injustice, of cruelty, his 
sympathy, his clarity of vision, his afflu- 
ence of diction, his power to fling out great 
phrases which will long live and cheer the 
souls of men struggling against political 
unrighteousness. "27 



"The Declaration covers the case of 
America so justly that it enables the reader 
to forget America in man."28 



Page 57 



"Its influence upon American legal and 
constitutional development has been pro- 
found. Lock, says Leslie Stephen, popu- 
larized a convenient formula for enforcing 
the responsibility of governors, but his 
theories were those of an individual, while 
by the Declaration a State, for the first time 
in history, founded its life on democratic 
idealism, pronouncing governments to exist 
for securing the happiness of the people, 
and to derive their just powers from the 
consent of the governed.''^^ 



"The assertion in the New World that 
men have a right to happiness and an obli- 
gation to promote the happiness of one 
another, struck a spark in the Old 



World."3o 



"The Republic is but the lengthened 
shadow of Jefferson/'^i 



"Modern America is Jeffersonian. * * 
* In Jefferson was personified for the first 
time the American idea in its full and con- 
fident expression against prejudice, against 
timid conservatism, against historical ex- 
periences, the cherished traditions of Eu- 



The 

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Page 58 



Jkfferson 

AND 

Democracy 



rope, the French Revolution, and the armed 
pote.ntates of the world."32 



"No man has ever been so loved in the 
United States, or loved so long, as Thomas 
Jefferson was by those who had no interest 
apart from this common interest and no 
hope or desire except to share the common 
lot of man."33 



"The wisdom that Jefferson showed in 
working for a future good, and the willing- 
ness to forego the pomp of personal power, 
to sacrifice self, if need be, that the day he 
should not see might be secure, ranks him 
as first among statesmen."^^ 



"While others sought to preserve to the 
colonies the full enjoyment of British free- 
men, Jefferson declared their proper aim to 
be the assertion of the rights of man.''^^ 



"The principles of Thomas Jefferson as 
embodied in our system of government are 
to statecraft what the teachings of the 
Christ are to religion/'^s 



Page 59 



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"Jefferson was the first, and, for a long 
time tfie only very prominent American we 
know of who was willing to persistently 
own that democracy constituted the essence 
of his system, or the rule of construction 
which he would apply to the mixed forms 
of the State and Federal Governments."^^ 



"Jefferson is one of the greatest geniuses 
this country has produced/'^s 



"He is one of the choice ones of the 
earth."39 



"Few biographies leave on the mind an 
impression of nobler character than that of 
Thomas Jefferson, and yet there has prob- 
ably never been a man who has excited 
such antagonisms and been so detested and 
execrated by good men as he. 

"I myself was brought up in a family 
where the traditions were all anti-Jeffer- 
sonian. And as I write these eulogistic 
words, I am somewhat in dread lest my 
honored grandfather shall arise in indigna- 
tion and rebuke me. Indeed, until quite 
recently I believed that Jefferson was only 
another name for incarnate evil; that he 



Page 40 



Jefferson 

AND 

Democracy 



was guilty not only of the enormity of hav- 
ing fathered the Democratic party, but a 
man who was blasphemous, vulgar, and in 
fact quite unfit for the society of self-re- 
specting people. * * * But no Roman 
was sterner in virtue, no Spartan more 
severe in ideas of truth and justice. His 
principles were exalted and philosophic- 
ally true, and his fidelity to them was abso- 
lute. In the use of his great gifts never did 
he seem impelled by small motives or by 
personal ambitions. 

" * * * Jefferson alone seemed to com- 
prehend American institutions, as experi- 
ence and time have developed them and as 
we behold them to-day. He stands now as 
the most complete exponent, not of this 
political party or that, as is claimed, but of 
Americanism."^^ 



"Important as was the brave and deter- 
mined course of Jefferson in uniting the 
fortunes of Virginia with those of Massa- 
chusetts when the latter colony was the spe- 
cial object of monarchic tyranny; helpful 
as were his efforts in securing the Standing 
Committee of Correspondence for the col- 
onies; immensely valuable as was his 'Sum- 
mary View' to the cause of American 
freedom; essentially glorious as were his 
voicing of the New World protest and proc- 
lamation in the Declaration of Independ- 
ence; great and far-reaching for good as 



Page 41 



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was his work as the pre-eminent leader in 
aggressive statemanship in Virginia, which 
eventuated in religious freedom, the aboli- 
tion of entail and primogeniture, and the 
provision for the equal division of inherit- 
ances; splendid as were his program for 
popular education and his plan for the 
abolition of slavery and the colonization of 
the negroes — all these services are over- 
shadowed and eclipsed by his brave, mas- 
terly and victorious stand for freedom 
against monarchic, reactionary and class 
interests. This may, indeed, be said to be 
the supreme service he rendered in the 
founding of the greatest of modern nations; 
for his genius, courage, single-heartedness, 
patriotism and loyalty to the lodestone of 
liberty and just government, guaranteeing 
equality of opportunity and rights to all 
citizens, served to beat back the baleful in- 
fluences that in the light of history and the 
nature of society could only in the end have 
proved fatal to free government.''^! 



"When the Republican party came into 
power in 1801, their great leader, who, take 
him all in all, was the most influential and 
most masterful personal factor that has 
ever appeared in American politics, pub- 
lished in his first inaugural address a state 
paper which ranks second only to the Dec- 
laration of Independence. * * * jef- 
fersonian democracy has never since been 



Page 42 



Jkffkrson 

AND 

Democracy 



seriously combatted by any political party, 
but all subsequent parties have assumed to 
represent its principles."''^ 



"While other statesmen, appearing at dif- 
ferent crises and meeting the responsibil- 
ities of their respective times, have made 
partial application of democratic principles, 
Jefferson is the only one who promulgated 
a democratic code applicable to all times, 
all situations and all peoples. "^^ 



"Jefferson saw Americans, not as a set of 
people huddled together under the muzzles 
of machine guns, but he saw them as a 
myriad of independent and free men, as in- 
dividuals, only relying on a combined mili- 
tary force for protection against aggression 
from abroad or treachery from within. He 
saw a community of people guided by a 
community of good thought and pure pa- 
triotism, using their own special talents in 
their own special way under their own 
sacred roof-trees. Not a machine-made na- 
tion, but a living, growing, organism, ani- 
mated by one passion — the passion of 
liberty."^^ 



Page 45 



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HOW DEMOCRACY HAS LOST 



But the chief apology for these pages 
is not simply to affirm that Jefferson was 
the greatest of statesmen and lawgivers. 
It is to suggest the immeasurable loss de- 
mocracy has suffered through our failure 
to correctly appraise and extend his fame 
and philosophy. Achievement may win 
recognition, in some instances possibly the 
fullest recognition, disassociated from any 
thought of the one with whom it originates. 
But a knowledge of the moving, personal 
factor usually creates a keener interest and 
wider influence for what is done, than 
would otherwise result. It is hardly prob- 
able that the dramas of Shakespeare would 
have been so generally or so heartily re- 
ceived as they have been everywhere, with- 
out the mental association of them with 
William Shakespeare himself. Are not the 
Gospels more sought after, do they not grip 
the soul deeper because of the personality 
of the Master that shines in every chapter 
and lends to the reader His spiritual fel- 
lowship? 

The personal element, then, may mean 
much not only for him to whom history 
owes justice, but for humanity to which it 



Page 44 



Jefferson 

AND 

Democracy 



owes the widest information. It is not 
improbable that to-day the democracy of 
Jefferson would have universal acceptance 
among us and among other peoples, if we 
had proclaimed it all along as his, instead 
of trying to pass it over at one time and 
another to the credit of some one else or 
to confuse its authorship in the maze oi 
many names and more general factors. If 
in this we had been candid and right, 
American democracy w^ould not now have 
to dispute the field with that of modern 
Germany. We would not be drifting as we 
are upon an uncertain sea of political and 
economic thought, while men imbibe the 
propaganda and fallacies of Marx. Our 
Government would not be obliged to spend 
its energy and vast sums of money, which 
it is now'^doing, to thwart the disloyalty of 
American citizens schooled in foreign doc- 
trines. 

Is not Jeffersonian democracy good 
enough for Americans? Was the appeal 
not to it, when we achieved Independence, 
framed the Constitution and the Bill of 
Rights, enlarged the country, wrote toler- 
ance into creed, restrained monopoly, 
effected emancipation, preserved the Union, 
kept monev sound and speech, press and 
people free? Would not a continued 



Page 45 



The 

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reliance upon it have saved us from the 
tramp, the trust, the union, the group, and 
from all the exotic and noxious nostrums 
and monopolies which have permeated and 
irritated our industrial life? By it, and in 
the terms of liberty and law, considerately 
fitted to each changing circumstance, every 
right and relation of industrial and social 
growth and need could have been and could 
yet be defined and stabilized. 

The Russian says he wants American de- 
mocracy. Have we put it in his way? We 
have not given him even a chance to have 
it. He has not been told that such a man 
as Thomas Jefferson ever lived, or that the 
sanest principles of republicanism abide in 
his burning code. Of this he is as ignor- 
ant as millions of Americans. Our other- 
wise militant democracy, long opposed by 
the Eastern aristocrat and the Southern 
slave-holder, is now diffused and dis- 
credited in the prevalent denial of its 
creator. This has left the Russian free to 
absorb alone the same teaching which in 
its enmity to individual and national cour- 
age has come to the support of a brutal 
militarism in Germany, and diligently cul- 
tivates treason in the United States. No 
wonder the Russian ranks gave way and 
fled at Lemburg and at Riga. The soph- 



Page 46 



Jefferson 

AND 

Democracy 

istry of Marx and Lenine does not nerve 
men to breast the shock of battle. It 
teaches them to fling themselves away, to 
fling away their nation. Who ever heard 
of a battle won by a debating club? It has 
been said that Russia in her awful crisis 
needs a Washington. Does she? No. She 
needs, as she has long needed, a Jefferson. 
She has Washingtons. That is, she has 
great patriot captains, brave as the bravest, 
trained to the latest moment of military 
science, and ready and able to lead the 
Russian armies to victory. There is the 
consummate Brusiloff, the brave Alexieff, 
the dauntless Russky. But the men under 
them refused to follow. The fault is not 
in the commanders. It is in the rank and 
file, and it is there by reason of the spur- 
ious democracy they have embraced. 

The democracv of Jefferson mspires 
soldiers. It brings them to the firing Kne 
where they know and do their duty. They 
accept the sense and need of obedience. 
Thev feel that death with freedom safe is 
better than life with freedom lost. Nur- 
tured in it, the individual realizes that he 
is something in himself with powers and 
possibilities bevond those of the inarticu- 
late mass; that he is greater than a planet, 
and he is, because he can think and love 



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The 

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and battle for his rights; that he should de- 
fend his nation because it stands as the 
guardian of his home, his hfe and all the 
ties of his happiness; that it is idle for him 
to stake his fate and that of his country on 
the vague promises of noisy pacifists, often 
the victims, when not the tools of organized 
tATanny. The patriots who suffered at 
Valley Forge and won at York town; the 
riflemen who picked off the veterans of 
Pakenham at Chalmette Plain; the heroes 
who held in Shilo's leaden deluge were 
drilled in the tactics of Washington, Jack- 
son and Grant, but they were bred in the 
democracv of Jefferson. 



PERFECTION OF CHARACTER 



Depreciation of Jefferson is all the more 
strange and all the more shameful because 
of his personal worth and purity. Never 
was human character happier than his. 
Its completeness seems almost to have been 
of pre-natal design. His mother was a 
Randolph, descended from those of that 
name who in England, had won and worn 
renown among imperial warriors, states- 
men and scholars. And Jane, the eldest 



Page 48 



Jefferson 

AND 

Democracy 

daughter of Isham Randolph, was a true 
type of the womanhood and motherliood 
worthy of such advantage. Peter Jefferson 
was of modest lineage. But he possessed 
the giant powers of body and mind, the 
quiet, ruling presence, the mastery of self, 
the sureness of capacity, which in rich and 
poor alike, make kings of men, which 
brought him welcome in a family of the 
elite and made him there a successful 
suitor. And from patrician and plebeian 
thus mated sprang Thomas Jefferson, in 
body plain, in soul august, and destined be- 
yond the fairest dream of conjugal affec- 
tion to unite and make common in his life 
and in his deeds the £[race of his mother, 
the strength of his father. 

His childhood, sweet as a bygone sum- 
mer, resembled an idyl of innocence. The 
tasks required of him in toil and study, the 
pursuit of music, the cheer of good humor 
and charm of courtships engrossed his 
youth and later teens, and yet in that 
tender time, men of learning chose with 
him companionship. His maturer years 
but tell of their agreement at every stage 
with nature, with duty and with con- 
science. His whole life was an open, spot- 
less page, and the exemption of its earlier 
as its later periods from every vice carried 



Page 49 



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to its close the halo of its perfect morals. 
"Tlie glow of a warm thought" he once 
said, "is to me worth more than money." 
He wished "not only no act but no thought 
of his to be unknown." He declared that 
he "feared no truth for he felt no false- 
hood." And on taking final leave of office, 
he rejoiced that "his hands were as clean 
as they were empty." 

Men of such correctness often lack in 
heart; but here, as Hawthorne says, "Jef- 
ferson emerged superior," His record ex- 
hibits a very flush of friendships, running 
the whole gamut of humankind from Mel- 
bourne, the negro, to Franklin, the philos- 
opher. His kindness and help to the slaves 
whom the law placed in his charge was a 
segment of his vision for emancipated 
man. His attention to their every need in 
the rearing and education of his daughters, 
left motherless in childhood, was proof that 
his nature was dual, possessing the touch 
and sympathy that flower in the delicate 
sensibilities of woman, as well as the 
rugged qualities that mould the sterner sex. 
And other gifts also marked the variety and 
bounty of his tastes and talents. For he 
was the most cultured statesman of his 
time, yet evinced the true initiative of the 
pioneer. Art and science engaged him; 



Page 50 



Jefferson 

AND 

Democracy 

nature, tame or wild, enthralled him. He 
greeted with unfeigned delight the earliest 
leaf and blossom of the garden, while he 
conceived and encouraged to success the 
most momentous campaign of exploration 
ever essayed in the Western World. He 
referred to himself as "a savage of the 
mountains" to express his choice for rural 
over urban residence, yet appeared as a 
lion of litterati and of society, welcomed to 
their midst and showered with their atten- 
tions, whose choicest circles he entered 
with ease and left a general favorite. This 
he did as President of the American 
Philosophical Society and in the select 
companies to which he drew in Old Vir- 
ginia and at the capitals while Secretary of 
State and Vice-President; which he did 
also in Paris as a member of the French 
Academy of Science and at the noted salon 
of Madame Houdetot and other centers 
there of fashion, beauty, wit and genius, 
whether talking philosophy with St. Lam- 
bert, zoology with Buffon, belles letters 
with Baron Grim, criticism with De Grig- 
non, the Revolution with Montmorin, the 
French Constitution with Lafayette, art 
with the Countess de Tesse, finance with 
M. Necker or humanity with Madam de 
Stael. 



Page 51 



But with all this wealth of varied facul- 
ties and long continuance at the summit of 
public place and power, he never lost the 
genuine fervor and simplicity of the com- 
moner nor the sure direction of his repub- 
lican mind. At the age of eighty-three, he 
pronounced the word "Republic" with the 
same enthusiasm in which he wrote it at 
thirty-three. Neither prestige of success, 
nor office, nor glitter abroad, nor flattery 
at home, nor charm of mighty friends, nor 
challenge of majorities could wean or 
shake him from his first and robust faith 
in the people and future of democracy. 



THE END 



REFERENCES 



iWritings, V., 1, 153-160; 
id., v., 8, 11-13; 
id., v., 9, 38, 311. 
2Writings, V., 1, 156-157; 

id., v., 16, 77. 
3Writings, V., 7, 333-335, 350. 
4Writings, V., 11, 47, 277. 
5The Winning of the West, V., 4, 271. 
6Mere Literature, 196. 

7Memories of a Hundred Years, V., 1, 34, 35. 
SWinning of the West, V., 4, 271, 278, 308. 
9Writings, V., 18, 206-209. 
lOJohn Marshall. 
nWritings, V., 11, 188. 
i2Writings, V., 17, 459; 
World's Best Histories (U. S. Series), V., 2. 436; 
A History of the American People, V., 3, 156; V., 4, 32. 
i3Writings, V., 1, 352. 
i4Writings, V., 1, 70; 

id., v., 19, 211. 
isWritings, V., 1, 72. 

i6Lincoln's Speech, Independence Hall, Phila., Feb. 22, 1861 
i7Winning of the West, V., 4, 176. 
isLincoln's Letter to Boston Patriots, April 6, 1859. 
i9Randairs Life of Jefferson, V., 1, 461. 
20Writings, V., 16, 94. 



2iWritings, V., 10, 238, 249, 286. 
22Writings, V., 1, 278, 282, 283. 
23Writings, V., 13, 212. 

24Schouler's History of the United States under the Con- 
stitution, v., 2, 227 ; 
Encyclopedia Britanica, V., 14, 374. 
25Daniel Webster. 

26Ezra Stiles, President of Yale, 1778-1795. 
27Moses Coit Tyler. 
28Julian Hawthorne. 
29Francis S. Philbrick. 
30John Morley. 
3iRalph Waldo Emerson. 
32James Schouler. 
33James Parton. 
34Elbert Hubbard. 
35Thomas R. Marshall. 
36Ainsworth R. Spofford. 
37Henry S. Randall. 
38Charles W. Eliot. 
39Abigail Adams. 
40Mary Piatt Parmelee. 
4iBenjamin O. Flower. 
42James Albert Woodburn. 
43William J. Bryan. 
44Viscount Ishii. 



INDEX 



A 

Adams, Abigail, on the character of Jefferson 40 

Alexieff, Admiral E 47 

Ancestry, the, of Jefferson 48 

Author of the Declaration of Independence, the, silence 

as to ^ 

B 

Belief, religious, Jefferson for the freedom of 12 

Busiloff, General Alexel 47 

Bryan, William J., on the democratic code of Jefferson 43 

Burr, Aaron, the treasonable designs of,thwarted by Jefferson 16 

c 

Childhood, the, of Jefferson 49 

Church, the, separation of state and 12 

D 

Democracy, American, Jefferson the founder and herald of__l-2 

The understanding by Japanese statesmen of 6 

M. Viviani lauds the fundamentals of 7 

The distrust of some Americans for 8 

The Entente Allies fighting for 25 

The United States brought, in 1800, to the open door of__28 

Prior to 1776 only an abstract existence of 35 

The loss to ;;"1c 

The personal factor in 44-45 

The appeal to 45 

On social and industrial ills, the effect of 45 

Russian desire and need for 46 

Soldiers inspired by 47 

American patriots bred in 48 

Democratic Ruler, Jefferson, the world's first 25 

E 

Eliot, Charles W., on the genius of Jefferson 40 

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, on the Republic and Jefferson 38 

Envoys to the United States in 1917, Jefferson alluded to 
by the Japanese, but unmentioned by the French, En- 
glish or Italian 6-7 

Essex Junta, the, Jefferson as to the threat of 16 



F 

Flower, Benjamin O., on the supreme service of Jefferson__42 

France, the doubters of 8-9 

The glory of 9 

Freedom, religious, Jefferson a champion of 12 

Friendships of Jefferson 50 

H 

Hawthorne, Julian, on a just statement of Jefferson 37 

Hoar, George F., eulogies on Jefferson by 11, 36 

Hubbard, Klbert, the greatness of Jefferson by 39 

I 
Ideals, the growth of Jefferson's 1, 11 

Ishii, Viscount, a tribute to Jefferson by 6, 43 

J 

Jefferson, Jane, the grace and character of 48 

Jefferson, Peter, the natural endownents of 49 

Jefferson, Thomas, voices world wide democracy 1, 2 

Admires France 3, 9, 10 

Esteems Lafayette 3, 4, 5 

Helps erect a bust of Lafayette at Richmond and one 

at Paris 4 

Aid in the conveyance of 10,000 acres of land to La- 
fayette 5 

Suggests an additional gift of Land and money to La- 
fayette 5 

Tenders the Governorship of Louisiana Territory to 

Lafayette 5, 6 

Receives Lafayette at Monticello 6 

Reforms religious worship 12 

Advocates a large Republic 13, 14 

Effects the purchase of Louisiana 14 

Favors the Union 15-18 

Speaks for the individual, the state and the nation 18 

Strives to abolish slavery 19 

Champions the democratic system of government 25 

Opposes the monarchial idea, titles and levees 29 

Discourages nepotism 26 

Advocates rotation of office and a limit to the tenure 

and power of judges 26 

Encourages the country in the practice of democracy — 29 
Administers the government with success 30 



Writes wise words in behalf of republicanism 31-34 

Affords democracy practicable application 35, 36 

The democracy of ^I'tn 

The ancestry and character of 48-50 

The tastes and gifts of 50, 51 

The devotion to democracy of 5- 

L 

Lafayette, General Marquis De, the friendship of Jeffer- 
son and ^"^ 

Grant and donation of land and money to 5 

Jefferson offered the Governorship of Louisiana to 6 

Mt. Vernon and Monticello visited by .-- 6 

The United States happily influenced by the visit of 18 

Lenine, Nicholai, influence of 47 

Liberty, Jefferson, the friend of ""ii ic 

Louisiana, the purchase of V""-,'"' 

Lincoln, Abraham, democratic principles favored and en- 
forced by 22-24 

The doctrines of Jefferson recognized by ;f4 

A tribute to Jefferson by 24 

M 

Marshall, Thomas R., on the principles of Jefferson and 

the Christ --"'J? 

Marx, Carl, influence of 45, 47 

Morals, the, of Jefferson ^p, 49, 50 

Morley, John, on the assertion of man's right to happiness. 38 

o 

Okuma, Count, the Jefferson of Japan 7 

P 

Parmalee, Mary Piatt, on prejudice against Jefferson 40 

Parton, James, on the popularity of Jefferson 39 

Philbrick, Francis S., on the influence of the Declaration 
of Independence on legal and constitutional develop- 
ment ^^ 

R 

Randall, Henry S., on Jefferson's avowal of democracy 40 

Religious Belief, the work of Jefferson for the freedom of__12 
Republic, American, the, efforts of Jefferson to enlarge_13, 14 
Roosevelt, Theodore, misleading statements of ,as to France 

and Jefferson 8, 14, 2d 



Russian, the, untaught in American democracy 46 

Cause of behavior of at Lemburg and Riga 47 

Russky, General Nicholas 47 

s 

Schouler, James, on Jefferson and modern America __38 

Spofford, Ainsworth R., on the aims of Jefferson as the 

founder of the Republic 39 

State, the, separation of church from 12 

Stiles, Ezra, on Jefferson and Independence 37 

St. Louis, the city of, Jefferson honored by 21 

T 

Tyler, Moses Coit,what Jefferson put into the Declaration by 37 

u 

Union, the, faith of Jefferson in 15, 18 

Services of Jefferson in behalf of 15-18, 30 

V 

Viviani, M., American democracy referred to by ._ 7 

w 

Washington, George, manifests displeasure toward the 

democracy of Jefferson 27, 28 

Men of opposite views called into public service by 29 

The greatness of 29 

Webster, Daniel, on Jefferson and our liberties Zl 

West, the, fails to honor Jefferson 20, 21 

Wilson, Woodrow, an erroneous statement of France and 

Jefferson by 8 

Woodburn, James Albert, on Jefferson as a personal factor 

in American politics 42 

Worship, religious, reform of 12 

Y 

Youth, the, of Jefferson 49 



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